asocial INTJ tries to plan get together… lols

a self-serving recitation of self-deprecating vanity.

INTJ on the extreme end of introvert. check your myers-briggs six. i have to force anything even remotely extroverted. as a matter of fact, i wish that all customer service cockroaches and cashiers could just read my mind. it would save me a whole lot of verbal change.i don’t mind being the boisterous rabblerouser even when it means i seem over eager or desperate. truth is, i’m one of the most asocial, indifferent, socially apathetic people you will be privileged to never know. my take on social anythings is that if people gather to make idle chit chat and witty banter, i prefer to observe rather than partake. of course i get the irresistible urge to chime in and guffaw with others. and of course i occasionally revel in the energy of a good crowd, but it’s cuz i’m easily amused. i don’t need to feel and smell the hot breath of others to keep warm and sated. you will NEVER hear me refer to myself as a “social butterfly”.  it’s why i love being a little brown recluse on the fringe of the interwebs. it’s cold and distant and doesn’t feign connection. lovely cold hard detachment.

so what better way to be a nuisance than to try to coordinate others for a gathering. my obsessive organizational, compulsive coordination,  and irrational need to reach 100% completion on non-essential tasks make me prone to getting into a frenzy of activity when planning anything ever.

usually i get paid to do it. i’ve honed a start-up career out of a nesting instinct. i get paid to do what comes naturally to me. but on occasion i find myself involved in something outside work. rare but certain. it’s cool, i keep track of where people and things get off to. if someone in the department needs some obscure office tool or random scrap of data, i’m the go-to wench.  i’m the hub of this office for a reason. i collect and store information. it’s what i do to pay for my right to exist in this world so, of course, it’s a habit, too.  the talents come in handy and sometimes they result in kickass birthday parties for my kids and family. but sometimes things end in exasperated sighs from other apathetic folks who don’t even care to fake it for the sake of posterity.

but once in awhile, once in a very blue moon kind of while, i get that itch to be around other people. and as i’m filing through my mental catalogue of friends i keep at a distance, i realize i’d  rather continue the extensive affair that i began with my dvd player than take a shower and drive anywhere.  so then i turn to electronic means of keeping track of people. it saves me gas and cheekaches resulting from a persistent friendly smile (when you’re cheeks are as…prominent as mine, you don’t want to hold them up for extended periods of time). you think i’m kidding. please be so kind as to look at exhibit A: on none of my “social networking” sites will you see pictures of me with anyone but my own kids and occasionally, family members. please note the subtle absence of pictures of me anywhere but in my office or at the park. exhibit B: when’s the last time you actually saw me in public or, as a matter of fact, even heard my voice? i can all but guarantee you have not accidentally run into me frolicking on 6th street or lurking in the warehouse district in the past 4 or so years. exhibit C (which i can’t prove): 98% of my texts/phonecalls are to my bf.

yeah, i get it. you don’t care. me neither, truly. but what i’m talking about here is the unspoken RSVP request. a simple “can’t make it” would help my poor mind let it go. don’t think that i don’t call and/or email the superintendent’s office until i get a yes or no answer from his secretary for our department meetings. damn right. and he’s the 2008 austinite of the year. believe that.

if it’s a bust, then i can at least say i tried. if you’re asocial, hit me up (electronically, of course) and let’s not hang out sometime.

epic – one more entry left unfinished.

aelita 1 Tied and Tickled Trio

he came to an ocean, his soul in his hand

alone and turned in, to make his last stand

he stood on a rock and yelled to the wind

i don’t know how to live, i only do what i can

the wind screeched in kind, its protest of will

he threw back his head and heaved dry and shrill

the paean carried off on the crests of the waves

and he dove for the rocks and braced for the chill

falling through mist and the damp of the sea

he opened his arms to sound his decree

to a diving gull plunging down for a kill

this is my will and as i will, it will be

passage was offered, but he chose to swim

sodden with guilt, the sage rushes in

again as before, ventured off filled with fear

glistening wet with the thickness of sin

soaked through with blame self-imposed and contained

a great hole in his hand, his innocence stained

murky clay eyes; fragile, torn paper skin

weary with all his past joys abstained

the surface drew near, both clear and dark

a peace filled his chest and he aimed for his mark

there below waits his truth and his reason

guised as a game, an adventure, a lark

the waters of timeless appeal splashed all around

fruition, delight, and rapture profound

he consumed, voracious infant at breast

chaos ensued but he heard just one sound

calliope’s aria, streaming through hadal and brine

his Nemesis, his antithesis, exoneration divine

inverse, though perverse, extends her pale hand

this fruit, suspended from the tip of an ill-fated line

time and a hizalf

i’ve been in the meat locker, my “office”, for 12 and half hours. i’ve worked half of my regular work week in two days. and all that shit in 4 inch black patent leather heels and a smile. well, i got fussy for about half an hour when an hour’s worth of work got cut from the final project. my consternation was not easy to hide at that point. but then i felt bad for verbally expressing my frustration to my immediate superior. not because i’m wishy-washy but because i know that much of the mood around here depends on my ability to stay chilled. and i’m not just being egocentric.

i’m still traumatized from the woman that was here when i started in sept. ‘06. for my first 2 months on the job, i thought my place of employment was a frigid and barren wasteland and my perceptions of those around me were desperately skewed by her narrow lense. but they day after she left, without even 8 hours notice, from her wake emerged some of the coolest people i’ve ever met. it was like everyone around here suddenly had license to be themselves and it created a place that i now consider a second home.

the admin that came after was totally chilled and it made a huge difference. the ripple effect. i carefully observed our environment for months and learned the personalities and dynamics of our department at a distance. and now that the admin has moved on and i have taken her place, i know importance of a relaxed office manager. so these days, i’m training 3 people and myself, shoveling data and paper off of the walkway constantly. and it’s a beautiful mess of information and a fountain of learning curves.

and yay, i finally got approval, after weeks of nudging, to attend a 2-day conference for first-time supervisors. my annoying persistence occasionally pays off.

what’s a career gal to do?

these are your options

after 9 hours of work with no food or water, i went to an information session presented by william eaton. bill, the new ambassador in residence at UT, was the former ambassador to panama. which i’m sure most people already knew. but recall, i live under a rock and work in an office with no windows.

most of his presentation was anecdotal. he shared stories about his years working for the foreign services in the department of state. my eyes started to droop after an hour, but out of respect, i stayed to listen and watch. carefully.

while interesting to listen to, and clearly enthusiastic about his chosen career, i am hesitant to listen to a man that chuckles at his own audacity, having provoked the kgb while on assignment in russia. i suppose every man is granted his irreverent younger years. but there’s defiant, and then there’s stupid arrogance. i assume he’s now a seasoned veteran with all the usual trappings of a mature middle-aged white man who has acquired decades of socialization and training from the government. mmm, my favorite american demographic. i’m sure he’s done a lot of positive things in his life, but while ambassadors out of the country are concerned with the opinions of foreign interests, they have failed to properly prepare most of my generation. the so-called generation y, highly intelligent and capable, yet coddled and mysteriously quiet. we are most delicate. we are dangerous because we are next in line to grab the ropes of this wayward raft. and i assure you that we are just as capable, and even more likely than our boomers, to run this shit straight into the rocks. big expensive bright yellow SUVs that wreck things and ponder on the smoldering ashes. juggernauts of idiocy. and i’m talking about the smart, reasonably-educated ones. the rest are almost harmless.

i’m from the generation whose parents forbade red ink to be used to grade our work because of its harmful impact on our self-esteem…   ?!… for ritalin’s sake, people. i hardly know anyone within a ten year radius of me that can cope with high stress and conflict without pharmaceutical or chemical assistance. hell, make it a twenty year radius with the imperious rise of the laboratory-created superdrugs that prevent normal feeling and thinking.

i threw my flag when mr. eaton explained that there is no minimum educational requirement to work in his field. but you have to be an actively attending student to qualify for the internship. and it’s highly competitive. but one of his colleagues is working three steps down from the top with a GED. i don’t even have sarcastic remarks for that shit. inconsistent messages to college students and the american public. obviously, education isn’t the best or only estimate of capability, but why make students jump through scholastic hoops to compete for positions to which individuals with no credentials have equal access?

sitting there in one of the old, poorly lit, unattractively designed conference rooms on the campus where i work and study, i had second thoughts about my aspirations to work in politics, policy, diplomacy, government.

in order to effect change, you have to play the game of politics; no matter how strong your aversion to the games of clever diplomacy and strategically applied language, id est, talking too much. saying the same thing in a hundred different ways. saying it until just the right syntax strikes the intended chord. there are too many complicated webs to navigate to stay completely pure of intent. i’m sure every rookie idealist learns quickly in his/her first months in washington or any other entity of heavy momentum and influence. all enter with ideas but partisan politics don’t correllate with our impressions of what it is to be american. we greatly value our individuality but don’t realize it only extends to the outer perimeters of our ability to control our immediate surroundings. beyond that, the highways make you conform to the rules or you wreck. period. otherwise you’re just standing on the medians, yelling at passing traffic. those lines can haul the bleedingest heart along and teach them to bite. and i’m certainly not going to turn into some grassroots activist (a term i despise), flapping and squawking about injustices and corruption while the albatross hangs dead around my neck. i’m sitting here with my tow hook waiting for the right vehicle to pass.

isn’t there a place for an disenchanted, introverted, highly analytical, naked mole rat who likes to collect and harvest information? i could work in the bowels of any department, government or otherwise, happily collecting, extracting, and processing data. much like a bowel. i could do that. the little microflora that could.

I am not afraid of storms for I am learning how to sail my ship – Louisa May Alcott

believe it or not, the only place i ever use a computer is in my office. other than my brand new shiny mac desktop, i am technologically and media-logically impoverished. i don’t have a computer or even basic cable in my apartment. so these days, i come by information only from being told by others. and it’s usually such old news that i’m amused by their surprise when i express ignorance.

i certainly didn’t know about any proton collider until last night. i didn’t even know about hurricane ike until a day and a half ago, which is extra pitiful because i live in austin. and this morning i shunned work to do some reading. my eyes bulge at everything i read.

smashing together protons and such?! to try and recreate post big bang conditions for the purpose of understanding how the universe was created?! do we really need to know? trying to recreate particle events within the confines of our tiny, already-melting snowglobe doesn’t strike a harmonious chord in my gut. it makes me eyes want to well up and i can’t explain why. i’m not scared of magnitude. i’m not afraid of progress. but i don’t have to be a savant to know that seven trillion electron volts is one volt too many if those scientists lose even an ounce of control. their excitement and self-satisfaction are alarming.  bunch of reckless dorks. slow, methodical, well-researched, brilliantly dorky recklessness. this is my favorite quote from the new york times article posted on the 10th:  “The only thing physicists agree on is that they do not know what will happen — what laws and particles will prevail — when the collisions reach the energies just after the Big Bang.” um…pretty blatant admission of unwitting genius.

and this hurricane business is the immediate concern.  people are travelling into town from the coast and the doomsday headlines have everyone on high alert. it’s pretty consistent that hurricane season tends to cast a shadow on 9/11.

i went outside a little earlier and the sky was blue, the air was still, and it was HOT. now, the clouds are getting dense, the humidity is thicker, and the wind is picking up. it’s like preparing to enter the first circle of hell, only it’s the outer rainbands of a seastorm the size of the state its about to hit.

i don’t know what to think. i just hope come monday, my birthday, that all is well. it feels ominous to even say…

True, I talk of dreams
Which are the children of an idle brain
Begot of nothing but vain fantasy
Which is as thin of substance as the air

This wind, you talk of, blows us from ourselves;
Supper is done, and we shall come too late.

I fear, too early: for my mind misgives
Some consequence yet hanging in the stars
Shall bitterly begin his fearful date
With this night’s revels and expire the term
Of a despised life closed in my breast
By some vile forfeit of untimely death.
But He, that hath the steerage of my course,
Direct my sail! On, lusty gentlemen.

… ah me. everything is everything, folks.

heirarchy shmeiarchy

feeling impatient. feeling like i’m not doing the things that i’m supposed to be doing in this life. but a perpetual YET hangs around and shoves me into prickly hedges of anticipation, excitement, and loathing.

also feeling like i’m on a wait list. yes, you will fulfill mission. nope, not your turn yet. whisping through my awareness, gentle as barbed reeds, saying ”you have not developed to your potential because of circumstances out of your control and you will have to catch up when the time is right. you have no choice but to learn patience, so be patient. the present is not ready for you and you are not ready for the future.”

all this feeling makes me tired. i’m a thinker. and sometimes i think “why does your mission have to be so grave and why do you think you have something really big to accomplish? you’re not that special. only a few are and the probabilities play out with you leading an obedient and average life.” then my other shoulder angel says “fuck that attitude, wuss. if you weren’t meant to do big, you wouldn’t feel the incessant need to work yourself within an inch of your life to get there.”

i’ve gotten to a point where i don’t care if people think i’m eccentric or granola or whatever. i’ve inherited my mother’s odd peculiarities… being redundant for instance. for fuck’s sake, i live i austin. if i can’t blend here then i can’t do it anywhere so i need to get over it. i don’t stick out in a crowd visually, but that’s why i have tried to apply the motto “don’t talk until its necessary and/or for my own amusement”

in my own opinion, and i don’t intend to seek a second, i’ve almost completed my first degree of self-actualization. but i don’t buy the heirarchy, maslow’s or anyone else’s. i think it’s a fluid life and thus, self-mastery is a fluid state. the challenge lies in maintaining actualization in the midst of flux. it’s not linear. linear movement is deceiving. peaks and troughs. spirals and implosions. waves and chutes. no ladders.